Conrad Black: Impressive feline visitors, covered with fur (and lice)

A great many strange and memorable things have happened at our Toronto house over the years I have lived in it, and we have entertained princes and rogues. But there has not been a more gripping and affecting drama than has occurred here over the last week, generated by the feisty little kittens of a feral cat litter.

A thin cat, not more than a year old, miraculously produced four kittens and hid them in a very ingenious place under a great deal of thick shrubbery at a basement level corner in the side of our house, only about 20 feet from a ravine, and near a heat exchanger for the air conditioning system, the whirr of which generally obscured the mewing of the kittens. But as they are outside my library window, I saw the mother cat sitting on the stone wall above the den, ears constantly turning at every sound like miniature radars, on guard for any intruders and ready to move on behalf of her kittens.

Because we have several hundred feet of frontage on a ravine, there is a considerable movement of wildlife around us, despite a double fence, one for security along the property line and the other at the top of the ravine to restrain my wife’s formidable white kuvaszok dogs, large and swift and splendid. They are very affectionate with those they know, and friendly when not defending their own territory, but must be approached at home with extreme caution by strangers.

In choosing its den where it did, the cat escaped the raccoons, skunks and foxes, which generally know not to trespass other than in the dead of night, when the dogs are indoors. The mother’s choice of den also achieved the remarkable feat of eluding the kuvaszoks (in fact, these dogs do not attack cats — but cats cannot know this).

After gardeners discovered the litter, they alerted Barbara, who assumed her Gertrude Jekyll outfit of Wellington boots, hoodie and gardening gloves, traipsing around feeding the nursing mother. We knew a female feral cat would be best off captured, spayed and returned to the ravine, but not before she was given a chance to teach life’s basics to her kittens.

I watched out my window as she taught her kittens how to climb stairs. This touching rite reminded me of nothing so much as the sessions all parents have of teaching children to ride bicycles, including the wholesome sense of triumph when the little cat got to the top of the stairs beside the house and ran around its mother in circles of joy. One kitten was very unwell and was dispatched to the veterinarian, after which it quickly recovered from a nasty infection. Another kitten was adopted by our gardener.

Then the drama began in earnest. For two days, we heard almost constant distressed meows, and eventually Barbara and I systematically thrashed around in brambles and undergrowth until, with a powerful flashlight, we found a fierce little feline face about five feet down a plastic overflow sewage pipe, only about five inches in diameter, where the pipe turned from vertical to horizontal. It was a touching sight and often a nerve-wracking and even haunting sound, all made more poignant by the distress of the very doughty but rather beset mother, a mere wisp herself, as she listened to the cries of one kitten and tried to provide for another, while keeping a lookout for larger and unfriendly beasts.

I took a cord from a terry-towel bath-robe, attached it to a branch and dangled it down to the bottom of the pipe. Barbara had been putting out food and milk for the mother for several days (and she had stopped hissing at us), and we lowered a small dish of water on six foot gauze bandages. When we went to check on progress the next day, we found a little kitten beside the pipe peering very purposefully out at us, and saw evidences of use of our improvised ladder, as some of the fabric had been disrupted as if by little claws, and muddied, as if by an unwashed climber. This kitten seemed to be rather unkempt and weak and we sent it off to our vet, John Reeve-Newson, who said he would be fine after intense de-fleaing and a few good meals, and would be eminently adoptable. Barbara and I began modestly congratulating ourselves on a crisp rescue of a distressed little creature.

Unfortunately, this uplifting bout of self-contentment was jarred by the resumption of desperate little meows from the now traditional place. It turned out that there was still a kitten down the pipe, and the marooned specimen was in greater distress than ever. We called the city’s animal services. A rather frantic man arrived, explaining that he had only two colleagues in the entire Greater Toronto Area, because of budget cuts that eliminated over 60% of the department, leaving about one worker for each million households, and scarcely had time for anything. He said he would call the city’s principal animal rescuer at 7 a.m. the following morning. We left the bath-robe belt down overnight and put down more water. We did not supplement the marooned kitten’s food on advice from this expert that only famine would get a feral cat, even a kitten, to avail itself of an escape provided by humans.

By this time, our whole household was in a state of moral crisis and an astonishing level of concern and tension prevailed over the fate of this approximately six-week old kitten, who had now been down the pipe for four days.

Barbara and Don, who works with us here, were losing sleep over this strangely affecting saga, and while I was not quite as engaged as that, it was disturbing. The city’s chief animal rescue person arrived, said there was nothing he could do and suggested we just sit it out until the kitten no longer had the strength to cry audibly. This was completely unacceptable.

I had already alerted our versatile gardeners that we might need to dig the kitten out and three hardy men arrived promptly and shovel-ready: Geoff, Cory, and Chris. After three hours they had unearthed the pipe, broke into it behind the cat and put down food. She, as she turned out to be, gobbled it up with pent-up enthusiasm. Off the spunky little survivor went to our veterinarian, where the staff of The Animal Clinic was waiting like the trauma team at George Washington University Hospital on the day Ronald Reagan was shot. Though covered in fleas and sewage, she peered out at the world with fierce blue eyes, her determined appearance accented by her sewage-spikey hair and smudged nose. I have never encountered a more indomitable countenance, even on a mighty statesman or a great beast.

After a thorough wash-down and de-fleaing process as her brother had received two days before (hers turned the water and the white towels red from all the caked blood flea-bites had elicited), they were put in the same cage, as clean as pins, and licked each others’ faces with touching emotion, and gamboled about as friskily as other kittens of less challenged provenance. They wrapped themselves up to sleep as if still in their nest.

It was now clear that the first kitten to the vet had never been down the hole at all, but rather had taken post beside the overflow pipe in solidarity with his stranded sibling, defying even humans to challenge the tenuous line of contact between the two kittens. We made it clear that on no account were the kittens to be put down, and the second was also declared very adoptable.

Don, who had greatly contributed to the rescue, even trying to bring the kitten out with the house central vacuum hose at one point, and who lives in a semi-detached house nearby, will adopt both kittens, and so keep them near their place of birth. As already noted, Barbara’s dogs, dangerous though they are to other quadruped interlopers (as well as disconcerting to unfamiliar gardeners, whom they sometimes frighten up the apple trees, from which they use cellphones to call for assistance) are generally indifferent to cats and will not bother kittens.

It has been a microcosm, a sharp reminder of the fragility of life, as well as its mystical allure and unconquerable spirit. It may be illogical, but less than ever do I understand the mind of the abortionist, the executioner, and (though it is more comprehensible) the euthanasia advocate, and even of some hunters and casual fishers. It was exhilarating for all of us to save these little kittens, who, as Don will soon be reminded, are so stubborn, so strong of voice, and so tenacious of life. As my Scottish ancestors used to say, the world, and God Himself, “love a bonny fighter.”